Goodzer Helps You Shop Locally

November 18, 2010

7:17 pm

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The internet has changed the way we shop – from the way we research what to buy, to the way we actually purchase. Often, online research will lead to an online purchase, or send you searching for a particular store you need to get to. Despite all the focus on “local” search, there’s still a gap that exists in the consumer merchandising space. That’s why Reston, VA based company, Goodzer, is preparing to launch its service helping consumers to get the products they want, at the best price, in real-time at the stores closest to them.

Founder Dmitry Pakhomkin gave me a demo of the product, showing me how Goodzer automatically aggregates the inventory of local brick-and-mortar stores, from big chains to boutiques and mom & pops shops, and provides this info real-time with the location and in-stock availability. His team has been working on the artificial intelligence – namely, two different parsers – for two years, so all of this is done with zero human interaction. The parsers leverage data from services like Yelp, Yellow Pages, Citysearch and others, which for a city like New York, means millions of items in their database. Users will have access to product data from more than one million retail locations all across the United States. Soft-launch is planned for the NYC area in late November, and they’ll continue to roll out to the rest of the country based on their learnings.

In our demo, Dmitry did a search for the Nikon D3000 near zip code 10017 (you could also put in an exact address). The results are geographically oriented, but allow you to sort by distance, relevance or price. Each result displays the location of the store, phone number, the product info, current price, and other matching products.

Goodzer’s lean team is comprised of Dmitry Pakhomkin and Artem Zarutskiy. Pakhomkin has 15 years of engineering experience and was part of a startup that resulted in a multi-million dollar acquisition, while Zarutskiy has 6 years of engineering experience with a focus on artificial intelligence, genetic algorithms and high-load systems. The team has some angel funding and will be seeking additional funding this year.

Goodzer recently won the Audience Choice, Best In Show as well as Judges’s Choice for the Shopping category at the Under The Radar competition in Mountain View, CA. If you’re in the NYC area, the Goodzer team will be demoing this Friday at the Tech Cocktail NYC mixer event at Bar 13.